


i need more dreams (and less life)

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, Fix-It, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, i hate s7, its mushy, some descriptions of scarring/wounds/etc??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-18
Updated: 2018-08-18
Packaged: 2019-06-28 23:26:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15717255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "'I can't believe you think I'd go,' Takashi says."Or, Adam is alive, and what happened after he was pulled out of the wreckage.





	i need more dreams (and less life)

**Author's Note:**

> hi this may be my last fic for this fandom for either.... a while or forever. we'll see how voltron does but i'm not feeling it atm. i'm v disappointed 
> 
> i have a lot of thoughts about voltron s7 and they are NOT GOOD ONES. i could complain in these notes for 5849 years but i'm just gonna..... leave this mush here. adam deserved better
> 
> title's from fob's save rock and roll

They pulled him out of the wreckage like a loaded gun.

As if he was a weapon. Still burning with the memory of what a man could do, they pulled him out like he was undeserving of anything else—anything greater. He wasn’t a threat; he’s never been able to be a threat, because that would be to imply he’d do anything but relieve pain.

Shiro watched like a threat. Keith helped restrain him because he was on fire; God, he was on fire, he was on _fire_ , he felt like flames and desperation and Hell, he felt like Hell. He was Hell. He couldn’t be anything but. He dropped to his knees and hoped they would split apart into the Earth. He wanted it to eat him whole and reimagine him into something worth being alive.

He wanted mercy.

He wasn’t worth the life. He held his breath until he’d felt light-headed because he didn’t want to waste them. He thought, _maybe if I’d been able to save him I could give him all of my air_ , and then, because they had not found a body until later, _I’ll give him all of my air anyway_.

If Adam were a loaded gun, the moment his slight chest rose under an unsuspecting attendant’s hand would be its cocking. When they realized he was alive—Shiro didn’t, not until later. The worst part of knowing Adam was alive was that he’d never be again—not in the same way.

So maybe he never really realized Adam was alive. He stood there for a while, his eyes glazed over and bottom lip flicked over with strips of dead skin and blots of blood, and then he thought, _maybe I should go outside_ , and as difficult it was to not shut down this message, he did.

Keith told him like you’d tell a death row prisoner with nothing to live for.

 

* * *

 

“They told me you said my name,” he says.

Adam nods. Slowly. He’s falling apart in Shiro’s hands. His left eye is squinted shut, and there’s a pink-red burn trekking down from the curve of his nose to the entire left side of his cheek, bleeding out onto his neck. There’s a patch of it on his other cheek, too, overwhelming his ear, and the arms that he’d used to try to protect himself from the flames are unrecognizable. He’s definitely losing a finger—more than one, even. He may lose his leg. And there’s much, much more than that, actually—millions of skin grafts. Shiro’s lost count.   

(Like hell he’d ask him to his face).

“I did,” he says quietly, because everything he says has to be quiet. He says his head is pounding, and Shiro couldn’t do anything about that, so he fetched a doctor that could. Adam accepted the meds, but he said the one thing he needed was—well, here already. So Shiro stays. He’s holding a cold compress against his cheek and jaw, like medics instructed him to, just to ease the pain.

They said they’d done what they can, with their limited resources. Shiro instructed—rather, begged—them to find some sort of surgeon, orthopedic or otherwise. The head doctor had only been enough of an expert to instruct that Adam would definitely need amputations, but he wasn’t qualified to perform any sort of operation. So they wait until someone that is arrives.

Shiro will wait forever with him if he has to. It’s settled. He doesn’t give a fuck about the universe or how much his team needs him—because his team is not just made out of the obvious group. Adam’s his team. Adam was his first team. His one-person team.

He wants to press his mouth on every single burn on his body, but it’s too early for that, he thinks. Adam is still blue-lipped from the shock. They need to get him a psychiatrist, Shiro figures, or at least someone who can talk to him without wanting— _needing_ —to whisk him away into eternal protection like he does. That would be good for him.

There’s so much that would be good for him. So much he deserves.

“Can you move it a little—” Adam says, and jerks his head downwards, and Shiro nods and slides it down his jaw as smoothly as he can. He’s sitting cross-legged in front of him on a bed he’d been moved to, only hidden from the medical center with a thin curtain.

When the cloth touches the curve of his jaw, Adam sighs a little, closing his eyes. His mouth moves against the ghost of a _thank you_. Shiro wants to give him everything he has.

“Just doin’ my job,” Shiro mumbles, meaning to show he’s heard his gratitude, but Adam’s eyes flash open again, glares of color against a barren landscape. “Sorry to make you,” he says, and Shiro shakes his head. He strokes his thumb under the bottom of Adam’s ear, cupping his cheek, his eyes going downcast.

“No,” he says. “Don’t be sorry. You saved me.”  
  
Adam tries to shake his head, but Shiro’s cupping his face too tightly. “Do you hear me?” Shiro asks, feeling Adam’s hand slide up to his own, wrapping around his wrist in an attempt to tug him away but only staying there. “You’re a hero. A goddamn hero.”  
  
“Stop,” Adam says dispassionately, and Shiro’s throat destroys itself. “I love you. Do you know that? I love you.”

Adam gives this dejected little laugh. It’s the worst sound he’s made all day, and he’d looked Shiro in the eyes earlier and said there was no way to save him. “There’s nothing left for you, love,” he says quietly, thumb running a fine line against the prominent veins at Shiro’s wrist. “I know you—I know you want to be with me right now and I understand, and I love you, but you can’t wait forever.”

“Yes, I can,” Shiro says, a little breathlessly. “I can. I have and I will. And Adam—there’s nothing to wait for. This is just—we’re waiting together for the same thing, now. I’m not waiting _for_ you.”

“But you can’t—” Adam starts, but Shiro cuts him off. With his other hand, he takes Adam’s free one, carefully folding their fingers together after making sure it’s okay to do so. “I can,” he says. “Look at me.”

Adam does. He opens his eyes, just a crack. And God, he could live and die in that glance. Shiro could drink the color of Adam’s eyes for breakfast and devour his look for dinner. “No, look at me,” he says, a little quieter this time. “I don’t want you to look at me like I’ve already lost you.”

Adam opens his eyes wider. The natural amount. And Shiro wishes he could stop the smile from breaking out on his face but he can’t, and he’s never needed to kiss him so badly. Scars and all, pain and all, every single bit of disaster—he doesn’t care.

“You’re the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen,” Shiro tells him, because it’s the truth.

Adam’s silent for a second. He’s studying him, eyes darting every which way on Shiro’s face, as if he’s going to run away and Adam needs to memorize him before he does. “I don’t deserve you,” he says, his voice cracking.

“Please, _please_ don’t say that,” Shiro says, pulling away just so he can dip the cloth into the solution of cool water and some sort of soluble medication. He unfolds it a little so it can cover his cheek along with the part of his jaw he’d motioned to before, and Adam sighs again, nodding his head like it’s everything he’s ever needed. “ _I_ don’t deserve _you_ .”  
  
“You’re a fool,” Adam says, but softly. He’s not afraid of that sort of thing.

Shiro looks at him sideways and cracks a smile, and then they’re both grinning, giggling like schoolchildren, collapsing into each other as if there’s nowhere else to go. He carefully pulls off the rag and drops it in the bowl, placing it down on the floor so he can scoot closer and tug Adam in his arms, as tightly as he can, given the circumstances. He kisses his neck, hand sliding into his hair even though his palm lands onto a bald spot.

“Are you whispering something?” Shiro mumbles after a while.

Adam hums. “Just that you’re warm. And I love you.”  
  
“I love you too,” Shiro says.

Adam nods against his neck and pulls away, still keeping his hand there. He takes a deep breath. “Let’s just agree that—” he says, but then his face relaxes and he shakes his head. “I don’t—I don’t know. Let’s just not talk for a while.”

“Okay,” Shiro agrees, and Adam tugs him closer and kisses him. His mouth feels different, but better. Mostly because now Shiro knows all of him. Every single bit.

 

* * *

 

“Is this what you felt like?” Adam asks, moving his fingers.

Takashi’s drinking a coffee, reading some sort of magazine at the kitchen table of the break room of the Garrison teacher’s lounge. He has to leave Adam behind soon. Usually, it’d be harder, but Adam has started letting promises be what he makes of them, so he’s dealing with it. Slowly.

“Hmm?” He asks, and looks up. Adam flexes his hand in response, studying the movement of his bionic limbs like a television show. It’s weirder than the leg. “When you got your arm,” he clarifies, and takes the seat next to him. Takashi instantly threads their free hands together. “Feels—I don’t know. Like a pair of gloves?”  
  
Takashi chuckles and puts his coffee down. “Basically, yeah.” He lifts up Adam’s good hand—Takashi’s told him a million times to stop thinking of it as that, but he can’t help it—and kisses the back of it. “Now we match.”

He smiles, kind of stupidly. “Now we match,” he parrots. “You just need a new leg.”  
  
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Takashi says. “I’m not gonna give up all of those years of leg exercises so we can be a mushy couple.”  
  
“Who says we’re not mushy?” Adam asks, and Takashi snickers, squeezes his hand, and looks back at his magazine. Adam studies the fine lines of his face: every promise etched into his stress lines. There’s so many of those, now—the promises, he means. He doesn’t give a shit about the stress lines. Rather, he treasures them like he’d treasure Takashi’s mouth or heart. As a part of him.

“I love you,” he says, suddenly. Neither of them can afford to start getting sick of the declaration. “I can’t believe you stayed.”  
  
At first, Adam thought it was because he had nowhere else to go, but it’s not—he knows it’s not. It’d be possible to live without him, but it’s impossible to think of a situation where that would happen. His heart is not his.

“I can’t believe you think I’d go,” Takashi says. He leans over and kisses him, cupping his face with his palm and sliding it down to his neck. It’s cool against the skin grafts, which Adam’s learned to be deal with. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Me neither,” Adam says.

Shiro kisses his forehead and smiles against it. “Can I hear it?”

Adam takes a deep breath. And maybe—maybe, just maybe, they both deserve it.

“I’m not going anywhere.”


End file.
